"We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster." - Carl Sagan.
It seems he had several different versions of this quote from different publications, but they're all equally applicable.
I am reminded of the fact though that we voted for this! I wonder if any of the other parties, the fringe parties like the Greens or the Pirate Party could do any better?
Not really. Claire Perry was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for the constituency of Devizes in Wiltshire. Devizes has elected a Conservative candidate in every single election since 1924, so running for election there as a Conservative is kind of a formality.
She was then appointed to the position of Parliamentary Private Secretary to Philip Hammond, the Secretary of Defence. My understanding is she has no official position, qualifications, expertise, or mandate with regards to technology, the internet, or children's welfare.
Whilst I agree with you, one should point out that no politicians have the expertise or mandate with regards to technology, the internet, or children's welfare!
Indeed. There are probably many more who are highly qualified in many different fields. Qualifications and expertise isn't what gets you the job as a politician. Votes do.
The five-star movement in Italy seems to have largely rallied via the internet, so I would imagine there should be a few relatively savvy individuals in there.
Lets call it - the only know counter balance to experts running the show. We have a lot of geniuses on Wall Street and Silicon Valley and it hasn't prevented serious meltdowns that have effected millions of people.
Not to mention a law professor in the White House smart enough to interpret the law which ever way is most convenient.
In the US, now and then persons with a technical background turn up in high office, though not always for long or with the best effect: Herbert Hoover (mining engineer), John Glenn (engineer), and Harrison Schmitt (Ph.D. in geology) come to mind.
Children's welfare? It is probably more common for elected politicians to have children than not to. It is true that some of what one hears about their children makes one wonder about the parents' interest or expertise in the matter.
It doesn't really matter how safe a constituency is, there was an election, we voted, this is what we got.
To change that people will have to change the way people vote. Maybe one of the things the next candidate for Devizes can do is campaign on Claire's lack of understanding of technology and the impact that has on her ability to be an MP.
While I agree that this the way to go, I grew up in the neighboring seat and sadly tech issues are never going to get a foothold there due to the demographics and local political class - if you need a pop culture reference, Simon Pegg's Hot Fuzz is a practically a documentary about the area...
Who is "we". I sure as hell didn't vote for her, and neither did anybody I've ever known. I've never heard of Devizes and never met anybody from there. There's absolutely nothing I could have done to stop her getting elected.
I may impart what I have come to understand on others, but I will always convey the strength of my knowledge, especially if it is not strong, even if I appear foolish. It is called responsibility. This responsibility is at odds with pride. Understanding and acting in conjunction with this idea should be a pre-requisite for people in political positions.
We should require all elected officials pass a "basics of technology" test before they are allowed to comment or vote on policies that include these topics.
People who don't know anything about technology should not be allowed to make decisions enact policies on something they know nothing about.
The whole point of a republic is to elect informed representatives that can make decisions on important topics so that all X million people in the electorate don't have to. It's entirely reasonable to expect the people in charge to know what they're talking about.
Perhaps those in power simply need better (commercially disinterested, emotionally neutral) advisers for topics about which said politicians know nothing.
As I said in the other discussion, MP's and ministers have no working or practical knowledge of any department they run or over see. That's because we vote for them.
When was the last time a Doctor (of medicine) running Health? Or a teacher or headmaster running Education. Then, would you really like a policeman running the home office? Imagine all the power the police would be flooded with.
Or why is tech different? Why get that right and not the other areas?
Advisers? Ohhhhhhhhhhhh. Not going so well either, is it? Take drugs, we have a whole panel of advisers which both this and the last government just plain ignored because the moron voters are too stupid and screamish to take their advice.
Again, as I have said before, and been called a trite anarchist for saying so, the problem is democracy. We vote in idiots, usually lawyers, expect them to be experts in every area of life, then blame them when things go wrong.
As some point the electorate need to grow up and take some responsibility. Which clearly they can't do because the moron-o-sphere rules.
Like the poor Yanks, we too have the idiot government we deserve, and voted for.
Ed Balls (Labour Secretary of State for Schools 2009-10) according to Wikipedia was "from 1989 to 1990 a teaching fellow in the Department of Economics, Harvard University". So a modicum of teaching experience at least.
[Alan Johnson]
There's Ruth Kelly - "taught at University of Navarra, after she joined the Labour Party in 1990" [Wikipedia again] - Labour SoS for Education 2004-06.
Charles Clarke wasn't a teacher but was President (I think) of the NUS which would clearly give him some insight in to Higher Education. 2002-2004
Estelle Morris - "Morris was a PE and Humanities teacher at the inner-city Sidney Stringer School on Cox Street in Coventry from 1974–92, becoming Head of Sixth Form Studies" [ibid] - Labour SoS for Education 2001-2002. She was apparently the first Comprehensive school teacher to hold the post.
Before that:
Blunket had a PGCE and was "a lecturer in industrial relations and politics between 1973 and 1981". Labour SoS for Education 1997-2001.
Gillian Shepherd "gain[ed] an MA [Oxon] in Modern Languages, after which she became a school teacher and a worked as an Education Inspector for Norfolk County Council from 1963 to 1975". Conservative SoS for Education 1994-97.
tl;dr the majority of SoS for Education in the last two decades have teaching experience of some form. Moreso than I expected TBH. Would appreciate it if someone else considered the SoS for Health postings.
Out of curiosity, (I'm genuinely not attempting to incite a political debate) what would you consider a more effective alternative to the current structure?
I don't have any solid opinion one way or the other apart from knowing that the current structure is ineffective.
"The Legislative Council is the law-making body of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It comprises 70 members, with 35 elected directly by geographical constituencies and 35 elected by functional, occupation-based constituencies. Apart from its law-making function, the Legislative Council debates issues of public interest, examines and approves budgets, receives and debates the Chief Executive's policy addresses, and endorses the appointment and removal of the judges of the Court of Final Appeal and the Chief Judge of the High Court."
So their legislature is 50% industry experts. The Executive Council can be made up of experts as well, but it doesn't have to be.
Take education as an example. The Secretary for Education is a businessman, however there is an educator in the legislature, the Voluntary Chief Executive (Development), Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union.
And it shows. That was the point I was trying to make. There must be a few MPs who actually know enough about the Web to form a cross party committee within the system as it is. Surely?
There's the Science & Technology Select Committee, with at least some of the membership who have an industrial background. And Julian Huppert is on the Home Affairs Select Committee, which is perhaps more pertinent for this - he's a research scientist, but has been very active in campaigning on web issues.
Citizen policy juries, selected by random sampling of the electorate, with access to experts making public recommendations on policy.
Even if they don't have formal authority to legislate or execute policy, politicians enacting laws in conflict with those recommendations would have to at least explain why.
There is no effective science for this. Determining a more effective structure, for such a horribly non-linear dynamical system, requires mathematics which we do not have. I suspect that we are operating within a conceptual framework which is poorly serving our purposes. I think that a good number of problems that we currently face are rooted in this poor framing. How do you effectively parallelise code? How do you create systems that effectively satisfy objectives within dynamic environments? How do you build general AI? What is the mechanism that underlies the function of the brain? Where does life come from, what is it's driver? What is computation? What precisely is complexity? And... how do you construct a society which is, in the ways that we prescribe, optimal?
I would wager that there is a single big fish out there that recasts these problems into a framework which renders them at least partially tractable. We are in limbo waiting for a genius to find us a way out of this mess.
Structure is irrelevant while the electorate refuse any responsibility for their voting. Problem is people who have political bias and stick to it in a bigoted prejudiced way. On top of that, we have political apathy. Numbers wise, the majority is a non vote.
A change I would make is to make voting a legal requirement, but there must be a none of the above option. If "none of the above" wins, we vote again. Tedious, but hopefully it would force thought. Under no circumstances should a forced vote not include none of the above. I would personally freak if I were forced to vote for what we have now. I would be a NotA people.
Over all though, its down to us. The system is there for us to use. Information to base decisions on is out there like never before. Even in the US where both parties spend 100s of millions of $s lying and trashing, Americans could get to the truth, ignore the BS, and vote accordingly. But like every one else in a democratic country, the vast majority just dumbly vote for their usual party with out any thought what so ever. So, its hardly surprising that the politicians rig it all accordingly, and take very little notice of any one but their core vote, and their prejudices.
Tangent:
If you want a real leap, this why I partly understand (and please, not condone, justify, excuse, support, or anything else) terrorists attacking civilians. No point attacking military or politicians as they are enforcing our democratic will. Logically it makes sense, especially from afar. They think that if they change our votes, things will change for them. We are responsible for the actions of our democratic governments, because we validate them with votes. On the flip side, in a dictatorship, there is no point attacking civilians as they have no power and the government doesn't really care since it doesn't need votes. Its like my mum used to say to me, "Don't hate or fear the Soviet people, they don't get to vote" But of course, there is an implication there.
>> Problem is people who have political bias and stick to it in a bigoted prejudiced way.
This annoys the crap out of me.
I know people who are vehemently anti-Tory, who will take the slightest word of anything from the current government and twist it so they can paint it in the most evil light imaginable, and cast the current politicians as real actual demons.
Tell them you have no faith in the other side either and you'll get a lecture about the party of workers, rights for the poor etc.
Mention to these people that the legacy of the last labour government (war, prohibition, surveillance-state) isn't exactly shining and didn't actually help the downtrodden either and you'll get a grudging comment about how Blair was possibly a mistake but the 'toffs' in power now are only there to screw everyone.
Not "the whole Labour party was and still is in on this sh*t and are just as bad as anyone else, let's have some real choice", which is the only rational position I can think of. No, just hate.
I don't actually know anyone that admits to voting conservative so I haven't seen the other side. I'm sure its much the same.
My mother admits to voting for the best looking party leader.
Is it? I live in Australia, granted but it's not so different here and for the most part everyone's lives are pretty awesome. I think the biggest mistake idealists make is assuming that there is necessarily a better way of doing things that we are capable of as a society right now. That's not to say I disagree there are better ways of doing things per se, and that given another 5,000 years many of these issues will have been resolved but I think it's a mistake to look at a system that's basically working and focus on all the bits that don't work because all the bits that do work have become so commonplace that you take them for granted.
It's the facts that bother me. Long term unemployment being at almost a 20 year high, violent crime rates are the worst in Europe are two of the primary issues that indicate failure in my opinion.
I'm very much an apathetic observer though. I really can't claim to know enough about the politics in this country to pose a very solid argument but the glaring issues above are too apparent to ignore.
People who have invested their life in excellence in a discipline other than politics are going to be beaten at politics by the power-hungry sociopaths who want to be politicians. So we always end up with unskilled, unethical people in government.
Well, there are hardly likely to do themselves out of a prime job, are they? But in a way they sort of do, they appoint advisers....
We could have a whole new official layer of experts, but that would be shot down by cries of bureaucracy.
Initially I like the idea of expert opinion being mandatory. So, like with the drugs advice, I would like to see government forced to adopt their proposals. But would I be happy with police experts forcing legislation? Doctors, probably, but army?
In the end, I have to come back to general population ignorance an prejudice. "We" have to smarten up, and vote accordingly. Its the only way I see.
Once you have "industry experts" involved in politics it's "corporate lobbyists buying votes" or "revolving door government", or even "regulatory capture". Without industry influence, you get a bunch of ignorant politicians trying to control things they have no clue about. You really can't win.
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